The Samsara Jade

Chapter 12

Li Chen did not dodge. He did not run away. Instead, in a flash of lightning-fast speed, Li Chen dropped his hands from his head. He twisted his body slightly to the right. 

The giant dog missed his shoulder, but its massive jaws slammed shut around Li Chen’s left forearm. 

CRUNCH. 

The sharp teeth pierced straight through Li Chen’s thin skin and bit deeply into his flesh. Warm red blood instantly splashed out, mixing with the cold rain. The pain was terrible. It felt like his arm was being crushed in a vice of hot iron. 

"Argh!" Li Chen gritted his teeth, but he did not pull his arm away. This was exactly what he wanted. 

He needed contact. 

"Fool!" Mo laughed from a few feet away. "You let the dog catch you! Say goodbye to your arm!"

But the laugh died in Mo’s throat a second later. 

Something was wrong. Very wrong. 

Li Chen’s left arm was trapped in the giant dog's mouth. But Li Chen’s right hand was completely free. With blinding speed, Li Chen reached up and grabbed the giant dog tightly by its thick, furry throat. 

He looked directly into the dog's glowing red eyes. 

"Swallowing the Heavens' Breath," Li Chen whispered coldly. 

Instantly, a massive, terrifying suction force erupted from Li Chen’s right hand. 

The Heavenly Void Devouring Art activated at full power. A tiny, invisible black hole opened right in the center of Li Chen’s palm, directly pressed against the dog’s main artery. 

The Spirit Blood-Hound was a powerful magical beast. Its body was filled with wild, violent beast energy. But against the Primordial Chaos Root, it was nothing but food. 

WHOOSH! 

The dark vortex in Li Chen’s hand began to spin furiously. 

The giant dog suddenly froze in mid-air. Its glowing red eyes went wide with pure, absolute terror. It tried to let go of Li Chen’s arm. It tried to jump backward. It tried to bark for help. But no sound came out of its mouth. It could not move a single muscle. 

It was completely trapped by the gravity of the Devouring Art. 

Li Chen’s body acted like a giant vacuum. The wild, hot beast energy inside the dog was violently sucked out of its body. 

The energy rushed through Li Chen’s right arm, flowing like a rushing river directly into his stomach. 

The Chaos Root ate the beast energy hungrily. It chewed up the wild power, cleaned it instantly, and flooded Li Chen’s entire body with a massive, explosive surge of dark Qi. 

Li Chen’s muscles bulged. His broken skin began to heal rapidly. His eyes burned with a terrifying black fire. 

In front of him, the giant Spirit Blood-Hound was dying. And it was dying fast. 

The massive dog was literally shrinking. Its thick, strong muscles melted away in seconds. Its beautiful black fur turned dull and grey. The bright red light in its eyes completely faded, turning into dead, white glass. 

In less than three seconds, the giant, powerful magical beast was completely drained. It became nothing more than a bag of dry bones covered in loose, grey skin. 

Li Chen let go of the dog's throat. 

The dried, mummified body of the giant hound hit the muddy ground with a dull, hollow thud. It shattered into several pieces like a fragile, dry statue. 

Total silence fell over the cliff. The only sound was the howling wind and the pouring rain. 

Mo stood frozen. His jaw was wide open. His eyes were bulging out of his head. He stared at the dry bones of his prized, terrifying dog. He could not comprehend what he had just seen. 

A First Level boy had just killed a giant Spirit Hound in three seconds. He did not use a sword. He did not use a fire spell. He just touched it, and the dog turned to dust. 

"What... what are you?" Mo whispered, his voice trembling with real fear. The heavy iron armor suddenly felt very cold against his skin. He realized he was not the hunter anymore. 

Li Chen stood up. He did not look like a scared boy. The huge amount of beast energy he had just devoured was boiling inside his veins. 

The power was too much for his First Level body to hold for long. He felt like a bomb that was about to explode. His skin was glowing with a dangerous, dark red light. Smoke was rising from his shoulders. 

He pulled his left arm back. The bite marks on his arm were already closing up, stitched together by the powerful dark Qi. 

He looked at Mo. The black holes of his eyes were completely empty of mercy. 

"I told you," Li Chen said, his voice sounding like two stones grinding together. "I am the one who killed Deacon Lin."

"Demon!" Mo screamed in absolute panic. 

Mo completely forgot about his reward. He forgot about his pride. He just wanted to get away from this monster. Mo swung his glowing blue sword in a wide circle, trying to cut Li Chen in half. 

But Mo was too slow. 

Li Chen used the massive, stolen momentum of the beast's energy. He bent his knees and pushed off the mud with explosive force. Boom! The mud under his feet blasted away in a huge circle. 

Li Chen shot forward like a dark cannonball. He ducked perfectly under the swinging blue sword. The sharp blade cut only the empty air above his head. 

Li Chen drove his shoulder directly into the center of Mo’s heavy iron chest plate. 

CRASH! 

The sound of flesh and bone hitting heavy metal was incredibly loud. The force of the impact was terrifying. It contained all the power of Li Chen’s new cultivation, plus the entire drained life force of the giant hound. 

The thick black armor on Mo’s chest immediately caved in, bending like cheap tin. 

"Ahhhhh!" Mo screamed in pain as his ribs cracked under the metal. 

The massive tackle lifted Mo completely off his feet. He flew backward. 

But Li Chen did not let go. He kept his shoulder pressed hard against Mo’s chest. He kept pushing. He kept driving them both forward. 

Mo looked behind him. His eyes filled with total horror. 

They were flying backward over the edge of the cliff. There was no more ground. There was only empty space. 

"No! NO!" Mo shrieked wildly. He dropped his sword. He flailed his arms, trying to grab the edge of the cliff, trying to grab a rock, trying to grab a tree branch. 

But there was nothing to grab. They had crossed the line. 

Li Chen held tightly onto the screaming Enforcer. He did not look scared. He looked completely calm. He knew exactly what he was doing. 

To escape the hundreds of Enforcers coming down the mountain, he had to disappear completely. 

Together, the boy and the armored man fell over the crumbling edge of the cliff. 

The freezing wind rushed past their ears. The rain fell with them. 

Li Chen closed his eyes. He wrapped his arms around his head to protect himself. He felt the terrible, weightless feeling of falling very fast. 

They plunged down, down, down. They fell straight into the thick, glowing purple fog of the Beast Chasm. 

The toxic smoke quickly swallowed them whole. The screaming voice of Mo faded away into the deep darkness. The light of the storm vanished above them. 

Li Chen was falling into the absolute unknown, into a world of ancient monsters and deadly poison. He did not know if he would hit the bottom and die, or if the fog would melt his skin. 

He only knew one thing for sure. He was never going back to being a victim.